There is no easy way to explain how I’ve ended up living in the small former Soviet republic of Armenia.

Thankfully, I now have the luxury of running a personal blog with an unlimited word count. So let me give you the backstory.

(Not the full backstory, mind you. If you want to hear that, your best bet is to read Janapar, which is being serialised right now on my adventure cycling blog TomsBikeTrip.com. Here’s a link to the first post in the series if you’re interested.)

The more recent version of this tale began, I suppose, at the start of this year, when my wife Tenny and I cleared out our flat in Bristol, England, moved our few belongings into a phone-box-sized storage unit, and packed our bags for a year of nomadic living. The plan was not to go off on a jolly but instead to take our livelihoods on the road. Both of us earn a self-employed income by digital means, so anywhere with wifi is a potential workplace – which today, of course, is pretty much everywhere.

It was exciting. We would visit friends and relatives all over the world, staying in each place for a few weeks or months before moving on. And we would begin with Sydney, Australia, to where both Tenny’s sister and brother had emigrated several years previously.

Leaving Bristol had been a wrenching decision. I’m not a natural city-dweller – I prefer quietness and rural landscapes, having grown up in the countryside – but Bristol had simply felt like the place I could find my kind of people – not yet home, but a place that could become so. By leaving, these new connections would inevitably fade. There’s a real sadness in that.

Part of the reason for hitting the road again was that we’d served our obligtory time in the UK and were ready for a break. It is here that I must divert course slightly for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the current state of British immigration law. Our government has promised to limit immigration in order to appease a xenophobic voting public. Yet because it is impossible to restrict EU citizens from entering the UK (because of the same freedom of movement laws that allow Brits to move, work or go on holiday anywhere in the EU), blanket restrictions have simply been imposed everywhere else – including ludicrous changes to the rules by which a British citizen can bring their non-EU wife or husband to the UK.

Allow me to summarise. Under the current rules – which thankfully came into force after we moved to the UK in 2011 – I would be blocked by my own government from bringing my dear wife, an Iranian national, to live with me in my own home country. Why? Because I don’t earn the equivalent (in any currency) of £18,600 a year after tax, which the Home Office has decided means there’s an unacceptable risk she will try to claim benefits, even though she wouldn’t be allowed to do so as a temporary resident, and even though she’s a Masters-educated graphic designer. And since the new rules came into force, I wouldn’t be able to declare my own parents’ savings or earning power as evidence of financial means. This is all, by the way, simply in order for her to set foot on British soil, not to claim permanent residency or citizenship.

There are now an estimated 33,000 people unable to live in the same country as their wives and husbands, as well as around 15,000 children who know one of their parents only through Skype. In effect, this means that around 47% of working Brits do not earn enough to fall in love with a foreigner.

Whatever real issues there are surrounding immigration in general, the solution has got to be better than this.

So much for immigration law. Even though we were among the lucky ones, having moved back to the UK under the previous (still restrictive) set of rules, it still cost us thousands in application costs and lawyers’ fees, and – here’s the point – obliged us to spend three years living in the UK before Tenny could apply for citizenship. These three years we had spent in London, the Lake District, and finally Bristol.

We’d embraced this as an experimental period, particularly as life in England was completely new to Tenny. By the end of 2014 we both felt that Bristol was where we’d eventually establish a base, and that our year of nomadic living would probably result in a return there.

(There were other reasons I desperately needed to leave the UK, too, many of which echoed my original reasons for leaving back in 2007, only magnified by a political and economic climate even more oppressive towards those who would prefer to live outside the ever-more shallow and materialistic value system that mainstream society has been sucked into. But that’s a topic for another blog post.)

Suddenly we were in Australia, living with Tenny’s sister in the Dee Why suburb of Sydney’s Northern Beaches. I shipped over my bicycle, bought a 7-foot foamie, and for two months spent my mornings writing a new book in a beachfront coffee shop, and my afternoons swallowing seawater and learning how to duck-dive.

He’s going for it…Wahey!Oh.Time out.

In between slurping and surfing, I took plenty of time out to wander around Sydney in my thongs, marvelling at Sydney’s taken-for-granteds – free gas-powered public barbecues, seawater-fed swimming pools, public showers and changing rooms every few hundred metres; state furnishings every bit as critical here as bus stops and asphalt roads. I knew Australians were famous for taking it easy. I hadn’t realised it was institutionalised. As the life of a digital nomad goes, there was very, very little to complain about.

And perhaps that’s why Australia, too, did not feel like a place I could remain indefinitely.

The idea of settling there had been voiced: we’d be near Tenny’s family, and it’d make a great base from which to explore parts of the world to which I’d never been.

But a life of leisure and ease, I knew, was not my goal, despite it being the distant promise all those overworked folk back in London were chasing after, and despite the fact that the Aussies seemed to revel in it from birth, with a tangible aura of contentment in the air as a result.

I need – have always needed – resistance; something to push against and work to change; and while I’m sure I would have found such resistance in Sydney if I looked hard enough, I would almost certainly be joining someone else’s fight, just for the sake of fighting. Don’t get me wrong, Sydney is an utterly fantastic place to hang out for a couple of months, but it will remain a place to visit family and to enjoy in brief snippets (which is why we’re heading back for another month in January).

Two ebooks written, and having finally succeeded in catching and riding at least one small wave from the line-up to the beach, our next stop was New Zealand. A professional adventurer would probably exclude this from their public output, for reasons discussed last week, but personally I have no problem disclosing the fact that I hired a car – yes, a car – and drove it around the North Island for a fortnight. If it sounds like a driving holiday, that’s because it was.

(If I wanted to prolong the illusion, on the other hand, I’d probably post a photo of the time I put up my hammock at a public campground, and refer to it as an ‘adventure’.)

There was a personal motive in coming here, rather than wanting to ‘do New Zealand’. Because on the outskirts of Wellington there lived a man called Mark. I had not seen Mark since the time he and I spent 10 weeks cycling together from England to Hungary. It was part of the cycling adventure that would set me off on this wonderfully random path through life, whose events and connections would lead me to Armenia, to meet Tenny, to eventually visit her siblings in Sydney, and to see an opportunity to visit New Zealand – and thus catch up with an old friend who I’d last seen cramming his bike into the boot of a taxi on the outskirts of Budapest, 7½ years previously.

So we flew to Auckland, drove to Wellington, and hung out with Mark and his wife for a few days.

But for Tenny and I, this year was about a different kind of exploration. Because as much as a huge part of me wants to remain entirely nomadic, travelling full time and living out of a bag, I’ve also been feeling that it might be best combined with some kind of ‘base camp’ – if for no other reason than that it’d be nice to have a place to keep all my bikes and outdoor gear.

There are other, more human reasons, of course. It would be slightly ridiculous to pretend that I’ve happened upon some startling new epiphany by realising that I’d quite like a place to call home. But I still surprised myself when I realised that this was true.

This year of wandering was very much about taking this time to explore these options in a conscious way. And we found we were finally getting a grasp on what the right kind of home for us might be like.

For most people, of course, there’s no question mark over what and where ‘home’ is. That hasn’t been the case for me (which is probably why I’ve turned out so weird). The village I grew up in, while I will always remember it more intimately than any other place on Earth, was always a place I would eventually leave for bigger and better things, as with many people with my kind of background. But those bigger and better things – the cities, the careers – were also not for me. The notion of home was put on the back burner while I lived on the road, waiting, I suppose, for some kind of realisation that this was where I was supposed to stop and stay.

Tenny, too is caught by circumstances, being from a minority community in her home country, Iran; yet also finding herself an outsider in the place all Armenians are indoctrinated into believing is the fatherland – Armenia – which in truth is a mere fragment of the former territory inhabited by Armenians, and a highly Russianised one at that.

But for the time being, at least, it is Yerevan I will continue to return to, not England, though I’m sure there’ll be lots of travelling back and forth. It’s a city I know well, having accumulated a couple of years’ residency and an Armenian passport over the last few years. I have many friends here; it is reinforcing old relationships as much as creating new ones that appeals to me these days.

And life in Yerevan is fun. I effortlessly meet friends in the street every day. The opportunities for outdoor adventures outside the city are second to none. And from a financial point of view, it’s a place we can actually afford to buy a property in, which is more than I can say for any viable location we’d want to live in the UK.

But more than that, it’s a place I can see opportunities to do something.

More and more, it seems that the quest for meaning so many of us face in the developed world is rather futile in societies where the tangible aspects of life have mostly been taken care of; where there is little left to do but to squabble over ideals and opinions – and even that in an increasingly virtual, digital manner.

In Armenia – and in a great many other developing-world countries – there is still a huge amount of real, actual work to be done to realise an acceptable existence for everyone. And consequently there are a lot of people who’ve come here and made it their mission to do that work. They’re not necessarily travellers or outdoorspeople. But they are working for a greater common purpose. They are, in short, like-minded.

This doesn’t mean I’m planning to pick and choose from a menu of volunteering opportunities of other peoples’ creation. I know very well where my beliefs and priorities lie. And during this summer, a very clear vision developed for what I want to do here.

It is ridiculously ambitious.

It may come to nothing.

It certainly won’t turn out how I expect. Nothing like this ever does.

But the idea has taken hold in a way that no other idea has since the moment I realised – back in the summer of 2006, sitting under a tree in Edinburgh – that I needed to try and cycle round the world.

I know it. I am sure of it. Because when the right idea comes along, something very strange happens when you open your mouth and tell people about it. The response is magic. People detect, subconsciously, that you are speaking with utter conviction, that the thoughts that drive your words are coming from your heart. And that energy bounces and crackles around you. Suddenly everyone is compelled to encourage, to suggest, to offer assistance, to make connections, or simply just to smile in appreciation. And the world conspires to help you.

So much for finding your calling. I’ll lay the idea out in an upcoming blog post. Because this, I feel, could be the start of something big.

Another great post Tom. I can definitely relate to much of it. Through my own actions I am this weird kind of stateless person myself now. Mostly still an Aussie I suppose but the country itself feels somewhat foreign to me now, I have an Austrian passport but don’t even speak the language, the Brits won’t take me as their own, the kids are born in 3 different countries and after 3 years our time in Argentina is almost at an end. Well you know the surreal situation I find myself in (which I am certainly not complaining about!) but being so close to that government system is strange for me, someone who lives outside that same system. Anyway good writing. Look forward to the next!

Great post, Tom! I really love reading your thoughts and experiences about so many issues that I spend a lot of time thinking about too, like what I mean by ‘home’, finding where in the world that might be, and questioning whether I feel at home in the UK, which is the country I was born in and where my family’s roots are, but that I did not grow up in and do not feel bound to, and where I feel increasingly alienated by many of the things you mention and others besides – the anti-immigrant rhetoric and legal systems and practices, the materialistic culture, the high levels of inequality, the attacks on people who are considered ‘poor’ etc. Despite all that I am here and for now it is home, although I am fortunate to have other places elsewhere that are ‘home’ too. I must say I disagree with you when you say that there is “little left to do” in the UK though- I think there is loads to do to make the UK a less unjust and unequal society, precisely because of all the problems there are! That is the main reason why I am still here (at least for now) and why I lead the apparently ‘conventional’ life of a full-time employee, because I believe that through what I do, in a small way, I can make a difference to some individuals, for the better good of our society. (I am an immigration lawyer; I mainly represent asylum seekers, and every day is a fight against the UK government and the inhuman way it treats some human beings). Everyone must find their own path of course, and I can’t wait to hear what your idea for the future is – it certainly sounds exciting! Thanks for sharing and best of luck, Jennine

Yes, you’re right – that was a little bit too rhetorical. Many of my friends work in the public, non-profit and charity sectors in London and elsewhere and the insight they’ve given me into the thoroughly inhuman attitude towards the plight of society’s most vulnerable people is sickening, and seemingly getting worse under the current government. I really do have the utmost respect for people such as yourself who dedicate their energies to fighting these injustices and inequalities – I just have huge difficulty understanding why a society with the capacity to help those who need it instead chooses to prey upon and demonise them.

Having lived in the UK most of my life plus a year each in Austria and Poland, I sympathise with the perceived difference of what’s “left to do” in different countries. It really does feel like here it’s about opinions and ideas, and that trying to push against it is futile, thankless and self-defeating work. Elsewhere the work to be done feels more concrete, sometimes literally so. It’s a rolling up of the sleeves to answer the call of “How can I help?” instead of a slump on the sofa to answer, “Why should I care?”

I’m planning a trans-European cycling tour myself right now so hopefully you’ll still be in Yerevan by the time I pass through, Tom!

On another note, what typeface are you using for your titles? I love it and its sense of gentle movement.

Really great post and point of view but also so true.Myself having double nationalities and still didn’t find a place I can call ‘home’.There is a place I really love in Andalucia, Spain but I still don’t know the way to make some decent life.At the moment a world Hobo!
Keep sharing your post ….love them!

” I know it. I am sure of it. Because when the right idea comes along, something very strange happens when you open your mouth and tell people about it. The response is magic. People detect, subconsciously, that you are speaking with utter conviction, that the thoughts that drive your words are coming from your heart. And that energy bounces and crackles around you. Suddenly everyone is compelled to encourage, to suggest, to offer assistance, to make connections, or simply just to smile in appreciation. And the world conspires to help you “.

The experience is familiar to me an no doubt many others. Poignant all the same. We await just what it is you plan to do.

Hi! I’m Tom.

I’m a self-unemployed creative explorer, author and filmmaker, specialising in Armenia & the Caucasus. Here’s where I share my personal journey as a world traveller, storyteller and advocate for the outdoors. More »

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